With or Without You
by lieselmemingers
Summary: Written for Dirty December (prompt: masturbation/mutual masturbation). Four drabbles; Katniss and Peeta discover themselves, and each other.


_A/N: These drabbles were written for the Dirty December challenge over on tumblr, hosted by everlarkrecs. The prompt is mutual masturbation/masturbation, so it's not exactly abstract what to expect in this fic. Enjoy!_

* * *

**With or Without You.**

_**"We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation." Lily Tomlin**_

* * *

_one._

It's been half an hour since the water started running.

She fidgets on the bed, arranging the pillows, folding a corner of the bed down ready only to tuck it back in neatly, bored and restless. She flips through the memory book. She fiddles with her hair until it sits right. She does everything Peeta's bedroom has to offer.

Everything but think about how Peeta has been in there for _half an hour_.

She knows his routine; he likes to wash quickly. He's never in there for more than ten minutes.

Unbidden, her mind reasons that it's his house – his bathroom – to do as he pleases. But it all feels so inconsiderate. She's waiting to crawl into bed and fall asleep in his arms and he's…

His absence seems to scream out something that she's not ready to listen to yet, and she grows angrier and angrier at the fact that Peeta seems insistent that she be faced with the fact that he wants – _needs _– pleasure that goes beyond holding each other at night. She feels it in the morning against her thigh. She sees it in his eyes, sometimes. And she's not ready. She's not whole enough.

Suddenly angry, and not caring that she can't quite construct a solid reason to be, she jumps up.

He must be touching himself, and it's making her angry. The ridiculousness of the very thought slows her down a little, but she doesn't find the good sense to stop until she's through the door and in the warm embrace of the steamy bathroom.

She's not quite prepared when she sees him. She counts the seconds it takes him to notice that she's there; fifteen. With embarrassment, she realises that it's fifteen seconds in which she had the chance to make herself known, but didn't.

Through a gap in the shower curtain, she can see that he's standing under the strong spray of the water, a strong hand braced against the tiled wall. His hair is flat against his head, and almost looks brown with saturation. Droplets of water form on his long eyelashes and run off down his face, curving into the hollows under his cheeks and then falling, free past the strong line of his jaw. His mouth hangs open, panting as he moves a hand over his erection, so slowly that she takes two breaths before he reaches the tip. He sighs a barely audible _fuck_.

He opens his eyes, and must see her out of the corner of his eye, because he jumps halfway out of his skin and clutches the shower curtain to his groin before she can blink.

"Katniss!" he half groans, as though all his worst nightmares have come true. "I'm sorry, I-"

She can't formulate all of the things that she's feeling into a coherent sentence, and so she says;

"Don't use all the hot water."

When she turns to leave, she hears his head _thunk_ against the tiles.

* * *

_two._

Things are far easier after they start having sex, but she can never quite bring herself to do things on her own.

The first time is the night after a particularly bad episode. She begs him to allow himself to sleep in their bed with her, but he won't. He still feels unsteady, he says. He's scared; she can see that. The marks on her wrists from earlier are blooming a deeper purple with each passing second, the patterns spelling out the shapes of each of his fingers. Her pulse hurts.

It surprises her when she finds it difficult to sleep. She's no stranger to it, but recently she's been so exhausted by Peeta that it was at least easy to find sleep, even if it was harder to find the peaceful kind.

Her fingers reach up and touch the wall that sits at the head of the bed. Peeta's just a few feet away, she tells herself, his bed mirroring hers. His head is mere inches from hers. The thought sparks something.

Sighing at her own lack of self-control, she rolls over onto the stomach, splaying her one hand on the cool wall while the other wanders down to slide underneath her body and into her underwear. It feels odd; the sensitive pads of her fingertips and the equally tender warmth between her legs, both vying for her attention, and she can't seem to decide on one so she slips her hand out and rubs firmly over her underwear, muffling a groan into her pillow as she hits the cluster of nerves at the front just right and, _ah_ –

She moves her hips against her hand, fingernails scrambling against the wall.

And, shamefully, she forgets about Peeta. She forgets about everything; she thinks of nothing. She doesn't need to do otherwise, because the pleasure is coming freely without provocation.

She forgets about him that is, until he opens the door quietly. She freezes and tries to feign sleep.

The bed sinks down a little with his weight, and his lips are close to her ear. "Are you trying to kill me, hm?"

Katniss bites her lip. He thinks she's done this to get him back in their bed. She doesn't have the heart to tell him otherwise, but doesn't object when he flips her over and tugs her underwear off, burying his head between her legs. Something's snapped inside her; something's started. She doesn't want to hold herself back. She wants to feel dirty.

She pushes him until he's on his back, and he holds his arms out expecting her to straddle him. She ignores him. She's sick of it that way. When she crawls over his face and sits up, she feels him pause for a moment, but then he wraps his hands around her hips and tugs her down, eagerly continuing with his tongue.

She doesn't realise until after she comes just how hard she ground herself against his face. And with the release comes the shame, and some part of her welcomes it when he takes the lead and flips her over onto her stomach, her shoulders and head hanging off the edge of the bed as he holds her hips high and fucks her until she can't remember her own name.

* * *

_three._

For the first time in her life, she doesn't have the energy to have bad dreams.

The baby sleeps soundly next door, quiet for once (although she doubts it will last long). Her stomach still feels heavy, and slack, though, and although they took the stiches out, she still feels sore inside.

She's torn from the comfortable resting point between sleep and snooze by a decidedly rhythmic motion beside her.

Peeta's facing away from her, with the covers pulled up high so all she can see is the top of his blonde head. His elbow pushes against the comforter with every thrust, and she purses her lips to keep herself from laughing, because he's never done this so honestly in her presence before, without the pretence of making it slow or somehow alluring.

"Peeta, are you-?"

He freezes like a squirrel caught between two trees, not quite sure which one to turn to. He gives up entirely and ducks under the covers away from her. "Shut up," he groans, "it's not funny."

She laughs so hard no sound comes out, but he can tell. She's almost crying when he stalks into the bathroom and kicks the door shut. "So you don't want me to help?" she calls.

The mortification of being caught must outweigh the allure of the offer, because three minutes later he comes out with downcast eyes and a soft penis.

* * *

_four._

She discovers that she likes to watch him.

There's something wicked about it; to witness him satisfy himself as his body commands him to; each little movement or twitch of his wrist or brush of his thumb against the tip, collecting the fluid that gathers there. She moves her hand faster against between her own legs.

Suddenly, the chair across the room seems an eternity away, and she reaches out her hand for him. He joins her on the bed, lying next to her. His light blue eyes follow the movements of her hand and seem incapable of looking at anything else. When she slides two fingers inside and arches up off the bed with a loud groan that comes from deep within her chest, his eyes move up to her face.

"So beautiful," he whispers, leaning over to brush his lips against her cheek.

Even in his thirties, Peeta's body is still strong and thick. It's summer, so his torso and legs are golden, and the heat of the room has teased little beads of sweat to the surface of his skin.

He goes slowly with himself, as he always does when they do this. The skin shifts over the head and back again under his rhythmic movements, and his head falls back against the pillows. He's tightening up all over. She doesn't want to watch anymore.

At the first touch of her tongue to his ridge, his eyes roll up into the back of his head, mouth wide open at the shock of giving over control. It doesn't take long for him to spill into her mouth, and when she looks up, he seems utterly content.

"What would I do without you?" he sighs quietly.


End file.
